Labor Day Adventures

This Labor Day we did something a different than an ordinary picnic or cook-out. Since Dad and the boys were out harvesting corn, Mom suggested that we girls pack a lunch and just go out and walk around the farm. So we did! It was quite fun.

We packed some sandwiches, mint tea, chips, and a couple other things which I can’t remember (XD), and took along backpacks filled with books and cameras.

This is my cucumber sandwich. Say hello. I didn’t want to waste the bread crusts after I cut out the sandwich, so I flattened them with a rolling pin, spread some cream cheese on, and rolled them up into roses. 😛

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First we headed past a place we call “The Sycamores” because… there are a lot of huge sycamore trees by the creek. DSC_2030 (853x1280)

I found some lovely periwinkle morning glories along the path. Aren’t they charming?

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We finally settled on a pretty, peaceful corner of the pasture filled with smartweed – a dainty little pink flower. We spread out a blanket, hung the hammock, and relaxed.

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This looks kind of weird…

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I love this one. ♥

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I did a really fun, cute photoshoot with my little sister here, but this post would be insanely long if I included all those photos oh wait it already is, so I’ll save it for later. Anyway, this was a great spot for taking pictures of little things. My favorite! 😀

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In interesting twisty stick.

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I love the bokeh in these pictures!
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Have you ever tasted sourgrass, or wood sorrel? That’s what this is. It tastes, well, sour.

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So pretty! ♥

 

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I found a beautifully shiny, polished nut.

 

The scenery was more scrubby here than the rest of our farm, but still pretty.

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Trees are nice.

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After we ate lunch and read for a while, we decided to move to a different spot. We crossed the barbwire fence (no easy feat in this pasture), walked over the field, up the hill, down a lane, and up another hill to a beautiful hidden spot behind a pasture. We’d never been there before, which is something rare since we’ve walked pretty much everywhere on our farm, and it was delightful to explore it.

Unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures with my camera because it ran out of battery, but Megan lent me hers.

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HA HA cows are such funny creatures. XD

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I think this picture is so neat but I don’t know why – it’s rather cluttered.

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I had the idea to play mancala while we were there. (Have you ever played that? It’s really fun!) I dug out some holes in the dirt with a stick and used corn kernels for the marbles. It actually worked!

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It’s really hard to see on camera, but Carmen and I built a great fort around this perfect square of trees. There were huge logs scattered everywhere (one pile was in a huge sinkhole O.o ). They made great walls but were exhausting to carry. We didn’t finish the fort, but we did make a good start.

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Mom and Carmen and I also built this little campfire area in a pretty shaded nook. We stacked stones for a firepit, hauled in some rocks and stumps for chairs, and made benches from logs and rocks. 🙂 It was fun.

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Mom also found this really odd-looking spider. O.o (She’s for you, Clara. 😉 )

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In the evening our whole family came up and had a picnic with us, and a bonfire too.

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So that’s what we did for Labor Day! It was great fun, even though the mosquitoes practically devoured me. I got over 40 mosquito bites (yes, I counted XD). O.o Anyway, the memories will last for much longer than the bites will, so it’s all good.

I hope you enjoyed this loooong post, my dears! Which was your favorite picture? Which was your least favorite? What did you do for Labor Day?

***Allison***

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Mountain Hike {Photo Dump}

Yesterday we went on a beautiful hike in the mountains with our friends. It was tiring, but so fun! Plus there was a stream and a waterfall, so that automatically makes it a good trail. 🙂 I took quite a few absolutely TONS of pictures, so do some finger exercises, get comfortable, and start scrolling. 😛

Such a beautiful view, don’t you agree?

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Ahh, so sunny. ♥

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Beautiful ferns…

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We’ve seen these weird corncob-like fungi before, but I don’t know what they’re called. We probably looked it up but then I forgot. XD

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There were a bunch of mini cascades and waterfalls like this before we got to the big one.

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A few people pictures: 😀

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The kids were splashing rocks into a little pool and I got some really neat pictures with fast shutter speed. 🙂

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I love how clear the water was!

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Ahhh isn’t this waterfall GORGEOUS?!

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I love the next picture, even though it sort of looks like Megan’s holding up the fallen log with her head. XD

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Ha ha, my brother Jeff was climbing all over the place.

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The fallen log kind of got in the way of the pictures, although it looked neat, too.

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If you wade to the other end of the waterfall you find another, much steeper and narrower one. It’s basically just a shoot of white water.

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BOKEH!

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Aww, look at the cute little millipede. XD

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Trying out my new lens on some flowers here…

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Ohhh it was a gorgeous day, and the sun shining through the new leaves was just too pretty!

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My little sister and her friend are so cute together. ♥

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As we were driving back, I got a few good shots out the window. (Surprisingly, it worked a lot better when I rolled the window down. 😛 XD )

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AHHH I absolutely LOVE this next photo! I love all the layers and shades. ♥

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*Gasp* Okay Allison, maybe you went a bit too far this time. O.o I applaud you if you persevered to the end and actually looked at most of the pictures. XD I hope it wasn’t too strenuous of a journey. But wasn’t the waterfall gorgeous? And the mountains? Ahhh, it makes my heart happy. ♥

Have a lovely day, lovely people!

***Allison***

Waterfalls and Bear Paws

Last week we went on a gorgeous (and rather tiring) hike with some friends. It included lots of water and waterfalls. Perfect!

Note: I edited some of these pictures. 😀 Just making sure you weren’t like, “WHOA, how does Allison take that good of pictures in a badly lit-forest?” Well yeah, I don’t. 😛

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Ooh, so shiny.
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I love this one!

Along the path there was this gorgeous waterfall hidden away in a little hollow. It felt like a private picnic spot or something. So pretty!

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Mini waterfall off to the side

Look at all of this liquid energy! Churning, frothing, bubbling water. Ahh…

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I really like this picture of mountain laurel. BOKEH! XD

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Meet our friends’ dog, Penny, who swam around in the river a couple of times. She was awfully hard to get a picture of. XD

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Guess what? We saw THREE black bears on our hike! There are bears where I live, but it’s very rare (for us at least) to see one. So we were super excited to get to see three on one hike! They were pretty cute. 😀 They didn’t even seem to notice us, even though the first one was fairly close to the path. I got some rather bad quality videos and pictures, but at least you can see the bears on them.

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I’m pretty sure the cub is drinking milk from its mother in this photo. Isn’t it funny how the mama bear is sprawled out all nice and comfy (or not) on the ground?

I was going to add a GIF, but it took too long and wasn’t very good anyway. Heh heh, so much for that. XD I might show you some bear videos in a post later.

 

Have you ever seen a bear? Do you like hiking? What was your favorite picture in this post?

***Allison***

P. S. CutePolarBear, it’s your turn for WordCrafters! Visit the WordCrafters 2 page to read the story so far. GO WORDCRAFTERS! 😀

P. P. S. Wanna hear something funny? You know the Baby Changing Station thingies in public bathrooms? Once I saw one where the “C” had been scraped off the sign, so it read: “Baby hanging Station.” How awful! (But you have to admit, still hilarious. XD )

Birthday Hike

Hey guys! I took gobs of pictures on the hike I went on for my birthday. Lots. Of. Pictures. I’m going to be showing you only some, but still a ginormous amount. 😀 Are you ready for this? Okay. Blastoff in 3… 2… 1… 1/2… 1/4… 1/187,990… okay, okay. XD Now!

When we went on the first trail, it was really foggy and rainy. We decided to come back to it later when it was sunny, but I got some neat pictures before we left.

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Ooh, spooky. Just kidding! 😀

Doesn’t the next one seem sort of like a writing prompt? (I edited it.)

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Next we went on a hike that was lovely and beautiful on the way down, but exhausting on the way up.

Flower pictures. 🙂

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I love this dewdrop picture:

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I have no idea what these weird corncobby fungi things are, but they’re neat looking!

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One tree had all kinds of different fungi on it.

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Millipede!

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The next trail was really rocky and mossy. I love rocks and moss! 😀

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This looks like an action shot even though it isn’t.

Sometimes you had to climb over boulders like this:

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I made collages of the many pictures of moss and fungus I took, because otherwise you would be here all day. XD

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Aren’t they so pretty? (And sometimes weird?)

Views from an overlook beside the path:

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At the top it was kind of scary because there were drop-offs on every side of you, and the path was really narrow. You had to climb over boulders that were less than two feet away from the edge to get to the top! *Shiver* 😛 But the view was amazing!

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On the way down we made a little fairy house, or rather fairy bedroom.

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My friend spotted these perfect, tiny spiderwebs. She got way better pictures than me. 😉

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Are you photo-weary yet? XD Did you have a favorite picture?

***Allison***

 

Lady-Slipper Hike

The title sounds rather strange, but don’t worry: the hike wasn’t actually littered with lady’s shoes, it just had some lady’s slippers flowers along it. Okay good, we got that cleared up. 🙂

Of course I took many pictures when we went on the aforementioned trail with my aunt, who kindly offered to show us the lady slippers.

When we first got to the path, there were about twenty butterflies – mostly tiger swallowtails – sitting all in a clump, maybe eating or drinking something. We didn’t even notice them until we walked right up to them and they exploded and flew away. It was AMAZING to see! Since I didn’t know they were there the first time, I didn’t get pictures then, but later we waited for the butterflies to come back and a few did. But only a few – not nearly as many as we had scared off before. Oh well, at least I got pictures of those few!

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This is a bee on a lupine flower. In the second picture you can sort of see the bee’s proboscis… I think.

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Pretty lupine leaf…

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And the stars of the hike – I present the lovely ladies’ slippers. 🙂 (Click on any picture in the collage to enlarge it.)

Spring + Hike + Camera = Flower Pictures

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I like the shape of these leaves.

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I edited this picture to make it look more like a fairy hotel. Isn’t it magical-ish? XD

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We found this weird but pretty metallic green beetle.

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And last, a simple picture of forest floor.

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I hope you enjoyed the virtual walk! It was quite fun, and it was easy hiking compared to the trails I went on for my birthday, but… that’s a post for another day. 😀 Which was your favorite picture?

***Allison***

P. S. You know that riddle that I asked you a long time ago about what word has all five vowels in it? Lots of you actually came up with answers that fit the riddle, but none of you thought of the word I was thinking of! (I guess it wasn’t a very good riddle if it had so many answers. :/ Oh well, it was fun!) The word I was thinking of was… sequoia! In case you don’t know, a sequoia is a type of tree that grows to be ginormously tall – kind of like a redwood. And with that, I leave you. 🙂

 

 

 

Fall Hiking: Part 2

Next up! A hike in the mountains. This is a spider we saw at the very beginning of the hike, but he was scared of my camera so he ran away and hid under his favorite leaf. 🙂

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Below is a rock that looked like someone cut a heart on it, but I’m pretty sure it was natural.

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Does anyone know what this weird red clump-of-berries-on-a-stem is called?↓

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Here’s a strange fuzzy-looking fungus – isn’t he so cute? 😛

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Now for some gorgeous fall trees!

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There was an overlook at the top of the trail where you could crane your neck (and camera) to see a small but very steep falls. I edited this picture because it wasn’t very good to begin with.

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For some reason there were also a lot of ladybugs at the overlook. I took a few close-ups of this pretty lil’ gal resting on my jeans.

090089And that’s it! I hoped you enjoyed the virtual hike – and trust me, you got off easy – that trail was TIRING!

***Allison***

Fall Hiking: Part 1

I went on two beautiful hikes recently, and took lots of pictures (is that surprising or what? ☺). So many pictures, in fact that they won’t fit into one post. So… I’ll do two fall hike posts, starting with this one! (Except the first two pictures kind of look like spring. ☺)

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Ahhhh… isn’t fall gorgeous? Which picture was your favorite?

***Allison***

A Beautiful Hike in the Mountains

 

We recently went on a hike with some friends.  We decided to hike the Dark Hollow Falls trail at Skyline Drive.  It was beautiful.  The waterfall was gorgeous, and along trail we found lots of interesting things. We kids especially loved the little creek running along the trail, and we could hardly be torn away from it to keep on the trail.  Along the creek we found some mini waterfalls which were quite pretty too.

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We also found flowers,

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Several pretty ferns,

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Teeny tiny mushrooms,

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Lots of lush green moss,

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And some interesting creatures such as… a millipede,

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A newt (or maybe it’s a salamander?),

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And a snail.

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We finally made it to the waterfall.

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The little creek that we had played in earlier in the hike turned to a roaring torrent of water.  The rocks around the waterfall were mossy and green.  If you leaned close enough, you could feel the spray of the water on your face.  We paused for some refreshment on some rocks near the waterfall.

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On the return journey, we stopped at a small pool along the trail.  The kids had lots of fun wading in the (freezing) water, and skipping and throwing rocks in the pool.  It was fun to see the big splashes the rocks made.

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Just as everyone had finished putting their socks and shoes back on, Jeff’s water-bottle decided to go on a sea journey.

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Of course, Jeff had to take off his socks and shoes again to get it.  With the water bottle returned to its proper place, we resumed our hike.

Near the beginning of the trail, the kids stopped to catch salamanders and crayfish at the creek.  Well, we tried to catch salamanders and crayfish, but the little sneakers kept getting away.  After the hike, we had supper at our friends’ house.  It was a great end to a great day.

***Allison***